Awake
by In the Garden
Summary: Not even Kuntsaito can make time stand still.


Awake

Not even Kuntsaito can make time stand still.

- -- --- -- -

Kuntsaito has rarely watched Zoisaito sleep, before. There are always too many other things to fill his time, too many other concerns to distract his mind, and he wonders idly how he could have wasted three years this way. Because, unlike his beautiful, beautiful sleeping partner, Kuntsaito _knew_ from the very beginning. He'd known it would end - and quickly - and somehow, he'd convinced himself that it wouldn't matter.

He knows better now, but it's already too late.

Their bed is large, obscenely so, but Zoisaito lays sprawled across more than half of it. He sleeps on his stomach, head turned away from Kuntsaito, and even after all their time together, Kuntsaito has no idea how he isn't kept awake out of sheer discomfort. He mentioned, once, that sleeping on one's back was considered much easier on one's body; Zoisaito spent the next month teasing him about his sudden interest in positions.

Zoisaito doesn't tease any more. He's quiet, even when awake, careful. Kuntsaito has been subdued, himself, but it still seems to him unnatural, the distance that has come between them, that polite gap that refuses to be bridged. Two weeks, this has gone on - it's why Kuntsaito began watching Zoisaito in his sleep in the first place.

Knowing his actions won't wake Zoisaito, he reaches out. Now that their positions are reversed, now that it is he who wants and needs, and Zoisaito who hesitates, Kuntsaito wonders how his partner survived three years like this. It's not enough to simply _know_ that Zoisaito loves him - it's not enough even to posses him as his fiancee never will. He wants to be reminded of it, he needs to hear it, again and again, never stopping. He wishes now that he'd understood, before.

Beneath his hand, Zoisaito's hair is soft. Half their linen closet is filled with products intended to erase the damage caused by habitual bleaching and colouring, and the results are among the few things Kuntsaito has appreciated from the very beginning. Rebellious strands of honeyed caramel twist around his fingers, and Kuntsaito chuckles to himself, knowing that Zoisaito will be furious when he wakes and discovers the tangles. Despite the braid he pulls his hair into every evening, his hair is always unkempt by morning, much to Kuntsaito's continuing amusement.

Sometimes, Zoisaito will ask him to brush it out. When he asks, Kuntsaito always agrees: somehow, it is more intimate than anything else he has ever done. It's also something he has never initiated, and he wonders now if Zoisaito would let him if he asked.

Kuntsaito is distracted by the unexpected groan, muffled by hair and pillow alike, but he doesn't move away as Zoisaito shifts, turns sleepily to face him.

"What time is it?"

Kuntsaito is tempted to smile at the slurred words, and then he remembers Zoisaito's morning appointment. "You have plenty of time," he replies. He doesn't miss the flicker in his partner's eyes, as though the other man had for one moment well and truly forgotten about his fiancee, but there's no way to take back his words. As is usual now, the shadow of Mizuno Ami-san wedges between them.

"Zoisaito ..." Kuntsaito doesn't know what it is in his voice that makes Zoisaito pause, but pause he does, frozen as though Kuntsaito has stopped a recording. They neither of them speak for a moment, and Kuntsaito is arrested by the strength in the smaller man's shoulders. Slimmer than his own, they are tensed, promising a power that Kuntsaito has spoken of many times, to Endymion, to Nefuraito, to Mizuno-san herself. And yet, it is as though he is seeing it for the first time.

When he continues to say nothing, Zoisaito stands, hands reaching to undo what remains of his braid, fingers already trying to comb through the innumerable tangles. Kuntsaito still cannot bring himself to speak, but he nods once, silent, as Zoisaito leans across the bed to hand him a brush.

"One more time," he asks, his green eyes uncharacteristically uncertain, and Kuntsaito knows that he won't be returning. He smiles, heart freezing within his chest, and echoes the man he'd not intended to begin loving. "One more time."


End file.
